_Curph._ (_to himself_). I wish I'd thought of that myself--earlier. Well, he doesn't seem very formidable; it strikes me I shan't find it difficult to manage him. (_Aloud._) The waiting-room, by all means. [_He follows_ Mr. TOOVEY _into the General Waiting-room, and awaits developments_. END OF SCENE IV. * * * * * "DUE SOUTH!" [Illustration] NOTE.--When I am travelling due South, as I am now, _per_ L. & S. W. R., to join my party, all I require may be summed up in the accompanying "_Mem._," which is to this effect:-- _Mem._--Give me a Pullman car, my favourite beverage, a good cigar, or an old pipe charged with well-conditioned bird's-eye, an amiable companion possessed of sufficient ready money in small change, give me likewise a pack of playing cards, let the gods grant me more than average luck at ecarte or spoof, and never can I regret the two hours and forty minutes occupied by the journey from "W't'r'o" to "P'm'th." To start with, the line to Pinemouth is one of those "lines" that have "fallen," in the pleasantest of "pleasant places." On a broiling summer's day you pass through a wide expanse of landscape, refreshingly painted in Nature's brightest water colours--plenty of colour, plenty of water. All over the sandy plains of Aldershot, boxes of toy soldiers, with white toy tents and the smartest little flags, have been emptied out; and everywhere about the tiny figures may be seen marching, lounging, digging, riding, firing, surveying, performing evolutions to the sound of the warlike trumpet, and generally employed in a sort of undressed rehearsal of such martial business as is incidental to a Great Campaign Drama. Then, lest the spirits of the travelling tourist should rise so high that he might run the chance of "getting a bit above hisself," as horse-dealers graphically express it, he is whirled away from the war-like scene, and is taken through the peaceful grounds of Wokingham. Here to the unwonted military ardour so recently aroused in the bosom of the travelling civilian will be administered a succession of dampers in the shape of attractively-placed and most legibly printed reminders to the effect that "eligible plots" for burial are "still to be let," and that the terms for intending residents in the thriving country town of Necropolis can be obtained on application to Messrs. Somebody and Sons at Suchandsucher Place, London; the tone of these notices suggesting, in a generally festive spirit, that the good old maxim "first come first served" will be strictly observed in all matters of Necropolitan business.